Tip Corner - CreateApplication

If you have the Gold license for Liberty BASIC, you can distribute your programs to people who do not have the Liberty BASIC language installed on their computers. You do not need to share your source code. There are a few steps that you must follow to create a distributable application.

Using the Runtime Engine

Gold licenses for Liberty BASIC allow the author of code to use the runtime engine. It is called "run*.exe" and is located in the same folder as Liberty BASIC. To use it, read the helpfile topic "Using the Runtime Engine." It requires you to do the following:

Create a tokenized version of your code. It will have the extension "TKN".
Copy the TKN to a new folder that you've created on your computer.
Copy the runtime engine to the new folder.
Change the name of the runtime engine in the new folder to match the name of the TKN. A TKN called "mycoolprog.tkn" requires a runtime engine named "mycoolprog.exe".
Copy the set of DLL and SLL files from the Liberty BASIC folder to the new folder.
Optional - use the icon editor to open or create a 16-color icon, and embed it into the runtime engine in your new folder.
Optional - copy any support files, such as bitmaps, data files, or sound files and paste the copies into your new folder.

An Easier Way!

Liberty BASIC 4.02 provides an easier way to get a program ready for distribution. Look under the Run Menu for "Create Application." If you select Create Application, the source code that is currently displayed in the Liberty BASIC editor will be used as the basis for a distributable application. Here's what happens.

You'll see this little dialog first. Notice that the "Create" button is disabled. Click the "Browse" button to begin. You'll be presented with a filedialog that allows you to select the location on your hard drive for your application.

If you want to create a new folder for your application, you can do it in the filedialog by clicking the "New Folder" button. Be sure to type the filename for your new application, and add the extension ".exe".

When you dismiss the filedialog, the path and filename to your new application will appear in the textbox in the dialog.

If the "Create" button is still disabled, check the path in the textbox. It must contain both the path for your new application and a filename for it that ends in ".exe". If the filename is not included, simply append it to the path in the textbox. The "Create" button should then be enabled. Click the "Create" button and Liberty BASIC will copy all of the runtime files to your designated folder. It will tokenize your code and place the TKN in the application folder, giving it the application name that you've chosen, but with the extension ".tkn". The runtime engine will be given the name you chose for your application.

Adding Files

If your application requires files other than the standard runtime files, you can copy them and paste them into the application folder. To do this, open My Computer and browse to the folder containing the desired files. Click on the filenames with the mouse. If you hold down the Ctrl button while clicking, you can select several files at one time. Once you have highlighted all of the files you need, you can choose the "Copy" option from the Edit Menu of My Computer or you can click the right mouse button and choose "Copy."

The files have now been copied to the clipboard. Browse in My Computer to the application folder and choose "Paste" from the Edit Menu, or click the right mouse button and choose "Paste." You should now see all of the files needed for your program to run properly, including the TKN, EXE, DLL and SLL files, and any additional files you pasted into the folder. To distribute these files to others that do not have Liberty BASIC installed on their computers, either copy all of them to floppy disks or burn them onto a CDROM, or use a utility like WinZip to gather the files into a single, compressed archive for distribution. See issue #111 for reviews of installation programs that work with Liberty BASIC applications.

Warning!

Do not attempt to create an application in the root directory of Liberty BASIC itself. Liberty BASIC needs to copy all of the runtime files that reside in its directory and place them in another location.

The Easiest Way!

The new Assist tools add-on for Liberty BASIC Gold makes creating and deploying an application even easier. It contains a deployment tool that allows you to specify addional files for your application, a deployment path, and even the desired runtime icon to be embedded in the runtime engine. For more about Assist, see Assist Tools Add-On - by Carl Gundel.